Richard B. Taylor Papers (MS-00341)

Richard "Dick" Blackburn Taylor was a prominent businessman in Las Vegas, Nevada and amateur historian of Southern Nevada. Taylor was born on January 31, 1929 in Quincy, Illinois and grew up in Glendale, California. After graduating high school in 1947, he attended Washington and Lee University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Hawaii. He served in the 4th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army in Germany during the occupation following WWII. In 1957, he married Charlene Flora Belknap and had four children.

Taylor spent his career in the hotel, stock market, security systems, publishing, and real estate development businesses. He began at the Hacienda Hotel chain in Fresno, California that was owned by developer and hotelier Warren "Doc" Bayley. Taylor was transferred to Las Vegas where he became resident manager of the Hacienda. He was soon promoted to General Manager of the Hacienda, and at age twenty-seven was one of the youngest hotel executives in America. When Bayley decided to expand his hotel empire by purchasing the New Frontier Hotel, Taylor served as an officer on the Board of Directors. Taylor was also heavily involved with Bayley when the latter purchased land on Mount Charleston in the hopes of developing the existing lodge building and property in Kyle Canyon into a resort. Just prior to Bayley's death in 1964, Taylor resigned from the Hacienda.

After leaving the hotel and casino industry, Taylor pursued various career interests. For a time, he left Las Vegas and worked as a stockbroker in Palm Springs, California. After returning to Las Vegas, he was the owner of Metro Alarm, and published the Mormon newspaper, The Beehive. Taylor also ran a real estate business in Las Vegas later in life.

Taylor became known in his later years as an avid amateur historian and author, self-publishing many works on topics of local interest. Taylor, a devout Mormon, critically examined the city and gambling in his first book, Las Vegas, City of Sin?, which he co-wrote with Pat Howell in 1964. Another early book documented the history of the Hacienda Hotel, and another focused on the origins and growth of the boomtown of Laughlin located on the Colorado River. Taylor also published a genealogical research book, Nevada Tombstone Record Book, which contained 750 pages of ghost town cemetery headstones.

Taylor was active in the community during both his early and later years in Las Vegas. In the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor rode with the Sheriff's Mounted Posse - an all-volunteer group that worked with Clark County authorities, served on the Board of the Directors of the YMCA, and worked with the Boy Scouts of America. In the 1980s and 1990s, he participated in the Secret Witness program.

Taylor spent his later years living in his mountain home at Mount Charleston, where he began to document the history of Mount Charleston by compiling newspaper articles on the area into several volumes. During the last year of his life, he received a proclamation from the Clark County Commission naming him "Historian Laureate" of Mount Charleston, and had his birthday proclaimed as "Richard B. Taylor Day." Dick Taylor passed away at his home on March 10, 2011.

Source:

"Richard B. Taylor obituary." Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 13, 2011. Accessed November 8, 2018. https://obits.reviewjournal.com/obituaries/lvrj/obituary.aspx?n=richard-taylor&pid=149212825